EAST COUNTY ROUNDUP: LOCAL AND STATEWIDE NEWS

June 13, 2019 (San Diego’s East County) -- East County Roundup highlights top stories of interest to East County and San Diego’s inland regions, published in other media. This week’s top “Roundup” headlines include:

LOCAL

• East County residents concerned over future of transportation (NBC 7)
• SDG&E Says There’s A 100% Chance It’ll Start Or Contribute To A Major Wildfire (KPBS)
• American Bar Association Votes to Strip Thomas Jefferson Law School of Accreditation (Voice of San Diego)
• California’s vaccination rate slips as medical exemptions rise (Wired)
• KPBS Lawsuit Reveals Unanswered Citizen Complaints Against Sheriff’s Department (KPBS)
• Stop Dismissing Concerns About the Risks of New Homes in Wildfire Zones (Voice of San Diego)
• What is the Vaccination Rate at Your Child’s School in San Diego County?
• East County family searches for answers after bicycle crash (10 News)
• Massive Buddha statue carved into granite in East County (10 News)

STATE

• California’s high speed rail route took land from farmers. The money they are owed hasn’t arrived.  (Los Angeles Times)
• A civil rights hero focuses on a new fight at the Capitol: clean drinking water (Sacramento Bee)
• Utility companies in fire-weary California strategize for a long, hot summer (Los Angeles Times)

For excerpts and links to full stories, click “read more” and scroll down.

LOCAL

East County residents concerned over future of transportation (NBC 7)

NBC 7's Steven Luke explains why residents in Lakeside and Ramona are worried if the future of San Diego's transportation shifts away from roadways and toward railroads.

SDG&E Says There’s A 100% Chance It’ll Start Or Contribute To A Major Wildfire (KPBS)

 In an astonishing series of regulatory filings, SDG&E said it is almost certain to cause or contribute to a catastrophic fire sometime in the next 20 years.

American Bar Association Votes to Strip Thomas Jefferson Law School of Accreditation (Voice of San Diego)

The school has faced a series of financial and academic challenges in recent years that led to it being placed on probation in November 2017. Thomas Jefferson plans to appeal the decision.

California’s vaccination rate slips as medical exemptions rise (Wired)

 ...California now falls below the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommended vaccination rate of 95 percent, considered necessary to protect a community from disease outbreaks through herd immunity…. Last month a paper in The Lancet Infectious Diseases identified the 25 US counties most at risk of a measles outbreak. Three California counties, Los Angeles, San Mateo, and San Diego, made the researchers’ top 25 list.

KPBS Lawsuit Reveals Unanswered Citizen Complaints Against Sheriff’s Department (KPBS)

 The data shows that more than one in six complaints made to the Sheriff's Department never got a response of any kind. That's out of a total of 425 complaints received between 2014 and 2018.

Stop Dismissing Concerns About the Risks of New Homes in Wildfire Zones (Voice of San Diego)

Pro-sprawl activists claim that the county will protect these far flung, sprawl developments through hardened construction standards, shelter-in-place policies and orderly, staged evacuations. But none of this is backed by science and, in fact, puts people at risk. Zoom in on the fire map here: https://egis.fire.ca.gov/FHSZ/

What is the Vaccination Rate at Your Child’s School in San Diego County?

NBC 7 Investigates has created a new tool for parents wanting to know the vaccination rates at their child’s school in San Diego County.

East County family searches for answers after bicycle crash (10 News)

A family in the East County is hoping someone has information about a bicycle accident that happened Saturday afternoon in Guatay, just north of Pine Valley. Ann Larkin says her husband, Warren Larkin, was returning from a bike ride along old Highway 80, and was just feet away from his home, when a good Samaritan found him in the middle of the road. Larkin was airlifted to Sharp Memorial Hopsital with 10 broken ribs, a collapsed lung and a broken clavicle.

Massive Buddha statue carved into granite in East County (10 News)

A Descanso man has finished carving a Buddha statue into a granite boulder in his backyard. “Buddha is in every tree just looking at you like every rock,” said artist Duncan McFetridge. “It’s connected to our saving our environment — all life is sacred.”

STATE

California’s high speed rail route took land from farmers. The money they are owed hasn’t arrived.  (Los Angeles Times)

John Diepersloot squinted under a bright Central Valley sun, pointing to the damage to his fruit orchard that came with the California bullet train…But what really irritates Diepersloot is the $250,000 that he paid out of his own pocket for relocating wells, removing trees, building a road and other expenses. “I am out a quarter-million bucks on infrastructure, and they haven’t paid a dime for a year,” he said. “I don’t have that kind of money.”

A civil rights hero focuses on a new fight at the Capitol: clean drinking water (Sacramento Bee)

 Civil rights leader Dolores Huerta, 89, mounted the north steps of the Capitol on Monday afternoon. She stood aside safe water activists to celebrate the state’s $130 million safe water funding proposal and pressure legislators to pass the measure this week.

Utility companies in fire-weary California strategize for a long, hot summer (Los Angeles Times)

With temperatures soaring and strong winds blowing through forests across Northern California over the weekend, rural areas in the Sierra Nevada foothills plunged into darkness after Pacific Gas & Electric Co. shut off high-voltage transmission lines to avoid sparking wildfires. The first formal deployment of its new “public safety power shutoff” rules left more than 20,500 PG&E customers in portions of Butte and Yuba counties without power as 260 utility personnel conducted safety patrols, repaired electrical infrastructure and inspected 800 miles of transmission and distribution lines, officials said.